‘Scandal’ Recap: Season 3, Episode 16, ‘The Fluffer’

It’s a shame. Just when you think you’re back on top, you make one wrong move that could upend all of your hard work. That’s the lesson Liv is going to learn next week on “Scandal.” This week, she got to get her mojo back.

I don’t know if it was her mother calling her “the help,” Fitz dismissing her last week to fight with his “wife” or just the sheer proximity of Papa Pope recently, but Liv has returned to the Olivia Pope of old. This week saw her shutting folks down left and right. Let’s count it: Huck, Fitz, Mellie, Andrew, Cyrus and Jake all felt the heat. And it was glorious. Abby may have walked in with the white coat of destiny, but it was Liv who was wielding all the power.

Liv has been taking her father’s advice to heart and trying to fight the good fight, no matter how dirty it gets. For that reason, Abby got to play dress up in Liv clothes and handle the campaign for a little while. She wasn’t prepared for a meeting filled with cold shoulders and animosity. No one was here for Abby (though Gabby seems to be a better fit for her) and her poll numbers. At the first sign that Liv wasn’t coming, Fitz, Mellie and black-eyed Andrew all walked out. Just rude.

Fitz is still nursing hurt feelings while spinning multiple plates. His fake mistress has written a tell-all—with Sally Langston’s blessing (and backing)—describing their non-existent affair and is going straight to the media with her tales, describing Fitz as “impressive.” What publisher allowed her to write this without notifying someone at the White House is beyond me. But, hey, it’s television.

Another plate that Fitz is spinning is dealing with Mellie, a wife he neither loves nor respects, and her affair his running mate. He wants to kick Andrew off the campaign, which Liv shuts down immediately. I’ve made no secret of my distaste for Fitz when he’s in whiny mode. He’s been cheating on Mellie for years. Her affair is just something he’s going to have to roll with. When Liv asks him what else does he need, he scoffs. So she runs down the list of all the duties that she has performed for him: nanny, bodyguard, cheerleader, ego stroker. But the job that cuts him to the bone is fluffer. “You’re being disgusting, and petty, and jealous.” Fitz walked himself into a pot-meets-kettle situation. Despite how all-wrong these two are for each other, this was the one time where he stood up for himself and didn’t make the other person out to be the bad guy. Their situation isn’t something that was done to Liv. It was a mess they created together.

And together, they have to figure out a way to win the election. Fitz’s first step is to ignore Liv and get his own running mate. Again, Liv shuts that down immediately and asks the hard question: “What do you need?” What he needs is to be petty and jealous—and break up Mellie and Andrew. “Consider it handled,” Liv tells him before snatching her hand away from him.

Breaking them up wasn’t as hard as it should have been if Andrew truly loved Mellie the way he said he did. But all Liv had to do was dangle the prospect of “teaching political science at a small, second-tier liberal arts college” and he was shaken. Sure, he bristled a bit, wondering how Liv could sleep at night. In the end though, Liv’s assessment was right, “Men like you will always, always choose power.” In choosing that power, he unleashed the wrath of Mellie. When she realizes Fitz was the cause of their breakup, she storms into his office and slaps him during the middle of a meeting. “You take everything from me!” she growls. Poor Mellie.

Suffice to say Abby wasn’t suited to handle the White House. But was trying to handle other business, like pump Papa Pope for information on how to drain B613’s funds. Apparently, since the ‘80s, B613 has been siphoning money from the Office of Management and Budget. How has B613 been using the exact same algorithm for nearly 30 years undetected?

That’s up to Huck to find out as Liv has tasked him with the job. Huck storms off when he finds out she got the info from Papa Pope, saying her father is playing her for a mark. When Huck refuses, she begins her first shut down of the night. “We all do things we don’t to do. This is what we’re doing,” she tells him. Mic drop.

It turns out that the sketchy intel was sketchy for a reason: the algorithm isn’t working anymore because the money’s not there. When questioned, Papa Pope says he loved the organization and Jake doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he’s trying to “euthanize” it. He said it more eloquently, of course, but Shonda Rhimes packs a lot of dialog into an episode we’ve got lots to cover. Anywho, Jake’s moved the money.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if Liv hadn’t already rebuffed Drunk Jake’s late night call. Jake’s very “heavy hangs the head” lately and becoming more like his old pal Fitz by living in his cups. He wants to walk in the sun with her and tells her she was supposed to save him from…whatever. His hurt feelings don’t mean anything until Huck figures out a way into the system. Liv needs to hack his phone, but the only way to get close enough to Jake to do so is to seduce him. So LIv just takes one for the team, filming what is quite possibly the most awkward love scene ever seeing as how Kerry Washington is full-on pregnant.

Still, her dedication to the job turned results: Huck was able to hack into B613’s everything just at the time Jake found out Mama Pope had procured a bomb. At the worst possible moment, Liv tells Huck to shut B613 down right when Mama Pope was about to reveal the target of her “Mona Lisa of Boom:” either the White House or the campaign trail. It doesn’t take Jake long to figure out what happened. He arrives—quite speedily; is B613 around the corner from the office—and wraps his hand around Liv’s neck. “You just killed the president,” he tells her.

Side thoughts:

* I know Jake’s mad and all, but I’m not comfortable with him wrapping his hand around LIv’s neck.

* I can’t think Mellie’s going to take this laying down. She’s been able to cut Fitz to the quick before, and I’m sure she’ll figure out a way to do it again.

* Mama Pope only shows up for a couple scenes an episode but she slays every time. She got her lover to deliver a bomb, a flunky/mentee to get cracking multiple fake IDs and then shake up Liv and Papa Pope’s dinner. Liv’s face the entire time screamed, “I hate to see Mommy and Daddy fight.”

* I have a love/hate relationship with all of the old storylines being mentioned. Reston killing his wife’s lover and Jeneane being “Taken for Granted” seemed so long ago, I had to wrack my brain to remember.

* Reston, who’s been a total sleaze from the beginning, is out of the picture. Deuces.

* Goodbye, Harrison’s friend whose name I never bothered to catch.

So what did you think? Did you like how Quinn ran down the list of her boyfriends, all of whom are no longer with us? Is Mama Pope the villain we’ve been waiting for?